...even Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev -- known in Russia as Mr. Yes for accommodating the West -- became frustrated with
the Clinton administration's tough love. As he told Talbott, who served as ambassador at large to the newly independent states from 1993 to
1994, "It's bad enough having you people tell us what you're going to do whether we like it or not. Don't add insult to injury by also telling us that it's in our interests to obey your orders."
...
...The sense in the Kremlin is that the United States cares about using democracy as an instrument to embarrass and
isolate Putin more than it cares about democracy itself. ...



Losing Russia
By Dimitri K. Simes
Dimitri K. Simes is President of the Nixon Center
and Publisher of The National Interest.

Foreign Affairs. November-December 2007
www.foreignaffairs.org



Faced with threats from al Qaeda and Iran and
increasing instability in Iraq and Afghanistan,
the United States does not need new enemies. Yet
its relationship with Russia is worsening by the
day. The rhetoric on both sides is heating up,
security agreements are in jeopardy, and
Washington and Moscow increasingly look at each
other through the old Cold War prism.

Although Russia's newfound assertiveness and
heavy-handed conduct at home and abroad have been
the major causes of mutual disillusionment, the
United States bears considerable responsibility
for the slow disintegration of the relationship
as well. Moscow's maladies, mistakes, and
misdeeds are not an alibi for U.S. policymakers,
who made fundamental errors in managing Russia's
transition from an expansionist communist empire
to a more traditional great power.

Underlying the United States' mishandling of
Russia is the conventional wisdom in Washington,
which holds that the Reagan administration won
the Cold War largely on its own. But this is not
what happened, and it is certainly not the way
most Russians view the demise of the Soviet
state. Washington's self-congratulatory
historical narrative lies at the core of its
subsequent failures in dealing with Moscow in the post-Cold War era.

Washington's crucial error lay in its propensity
to treat post-Soviet Russia as a defeated enemy.
The United States and the West did win the Cold
War, but victory for one side does not
necessarily mean defeat for the other. Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian President Boris
Yeltsin, and their advisers believed that they
had all joined the United States' side as victors
in the Cold War. They gradually concluded that
communism was bad for the Soviet Union, and
especially Russia. In their view, they did not
need outside pressure in order to act in their country's best interest.

Despite numerous opportunities for strategic
cooperation over the past 16 years, Washington's
diplomatic behavior has left the unmistakable
impression that making Russia a strategic partner
has never been a major priority. The
administrations of Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush assumed that when they needed Russian
cooperation, they could secure it without special
effort or accommodation. The Clinton
administration in particular appeared to view
Russia like postwar Germany or Japan -- as a
country that could be forced to follow U.S.
policies and would eventually learn to like them.
They seemed to forget that Russia had not been
occupied by U.S. soldiers or devastated by atomic
bombs. Russia was transformed, not defeated. This
profoundly shaped its responses to the United States.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Russia has
not acted like a client state, a reliable ally,
or a true friend -- but nor has it behaved like
an enemy, much less an enemy with global
ambitions and a hostile and messianic ideology.
Yet the risk that Russia may join the ranks of
U.S. adversaries is very real today. To avoid
such an outcome, Washington must understand where
it has gone wrong -- and take appropriate steps
today to reverse the downward spiral.

DEATH OF AN EMPIRE

Misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the
end of the Cold War have been significant factors
in fueling misguided U.S. policies toward Russia.
Although Washington played an important role in
hastening the fall of the Soviet empire,
reformers in Moscow deserve far more credit than they generally receive.

Indeed, in the late 1980s, it was far from
inevitable that the Soviet Union or even the
Eastern bloc would collapse. Gorbachev entered
office in 1985 with the goal of eliminating
problems that Leonid Brezhnev's administration
had already recognized -- namely, military
overstretch in Afghanistan and Africa and
excessive defense spending that was crippling the
Soviet economy -- and with a desire to enhance
the Soviet Union's power and prestige.

His dramatic reduction of Soviet subsidies for
states in the Eastern bloc, his withdrawal of
support for old-line Warsaw Pact regimes, and
perestroika created totally new political
dynamics in Eastern Europe and led to the largely
peaceful disintegration of various communist
regimes and the weakening of Moscow's influence
in the region. Ronald Reagan contributed to this
process by increasing the pressure on the
Kremlin, but it was Gorbachev, not the White
House, who ended the Soviet empire.

U.S. influence played even less of a role in
bringing about the disintegration of the Soviet
Union. The George H. W. Bush administration
supported the independence of the Baltic
republics and communicated to Gorbachev that
cracking down on legally elected separatist
governments would jeopardize U.S.-Soviet
relations. But by allowing pro-independence
parties to compete and win in relatively free
elections and refusing to use security forces
decisively to remove them, Gorbachev virtually
assured that the Baltic states would leave the
Soviet Union. Russia itself delivered the final
blow, by demanding institutional status equal to
the other union republics. Gorbachev told the
Politburo that permitting the change would spell
"the end of the empire." And it did. After the
failed reactionary coup attempt in August 1991,
Gorbachev could not stop Yeltsin -- and the
leaders of Belarus and Ukraine -- from dismantling the Soviet Union.

The Reagan and first Bush administrations
understood the dangers of a crumbling superpower
and managed the Soviet Union's decline with an
impressive combination of empathy and toughness.
They treated Gorbachev respectfully but without
making substantive concessions at the expense of
U.S. interests. This included promptly rejecting
Gorbachev's increasingly desperate requests for
massive economic assistance, because there was no
good reason for the United States to help him
save the Soviet empire. But when the first Bush
administration rejected Soviet appeals not to
launch an attack against Saddam Hussein after
Iraq invaded Kuwait, the White House worked hard
to pay proper heed to Gorbachev and not "rub his
nose in it," as former Secretary of State James
Baker put it. As a result, the United States was
able to simultaneously defeat Saddam and maintain
close cooperation with the Soviet Union, largely on Washington's terms.

If the George H. W. Bush administration can be
criticized for anything, it is for failing to
provide swift economic help to the democratic
government of the newly independent Russia in
1992. Observing the transition closely, former
President Richard Nixon pointed out that a major
aid package could stop the economic free fall and
help anchor Russia in the West for years to come.
Bush, however, was in a weak position to take a
daring stand in helping Russia. By this time, he
was fighting a losing battle with candidate Bill
Clinton, who was attacking him for being
preoccupied with foreign policy at the expense of the U.S. economy.

Despite his focus on domestic issues during the
campaign, Clinton came into office with a desire
to help Russia. The administration arranged
significant financial assistance for Moscow,
primarily through the International Monetary Fund
(IMF). As late as 1996, Clinton was so eager to
praise Yeltsin that he even compared Yeltsin's
decision to use military force against
separatists in Chechnya to Abraham Lincoln's
leadership in the American Civil War.

The Clinton administration's greatest failure was
its decision to take advantage of Russia's
weakness. The administration tried to get as much
as possible for the United States politically,
economically, and in terms of security in Europe
and the former Soviet Union before Russia
recovered from the tumultuous transition. Former
Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott has also
revealed that U.S. officials even exploited
Yeltsin's excessive drinking during face-to-face
negotiations. Many Russians believed that the
Clinton administration was doing the same with
Russia writ large. The problem was that Russia
eventually did sober up, and it remembered the
night before angrily and selectively.

EAT YOUR SPINACH

Behind the façade of friendship, Clinton
administration officials expected the Kremlin to
accept the United States' definition of Russia's
national interests. They believed that Moscow's
preferences could be safely ignored if they did
not align with Washington's goals. Russia had a
ruined economy and a collapsing military, and it
acted like a defeated country in many ways.
Unlike other European colonial empires that had
withdrawn from former possessions, Moscow made no
effort to negotiate for the protection of its
economic and security interests in Eastern Europe
or the former Soviet states on its way out.
Inside Russia, meanwhile, Yeltsin's radical
reformers often welcomed IMF and U.S. pressure as
justification for the harsh and hugely unpopular
monetary policies they had advocated on their own.

Soon, however, even Russian Foreign Minister
Andrei Kozyrev -- known in Russia as Mr. Yes for
accommodating the West -- became frustrated with
the Clinton administration's tough love. As he
told Talbott, who served as ambassador at large
to the newly independent states from 1993 to
1994, "It's bad enough having you people tell us
what you're going to do whether we like it or
not. Don't add insult to injury by also telling
us that it's in our interests to obey your orders."

But such pleas fell on deaf ears in Washington,
where this arrogant approach was becoming
increasingly popular. Talbott and his aides
referred to it as the spinach treatment: a
paternalistic Uncle Sam fed Russian leaders
policies that Washington deemed healthy, no
matter how unappetizing these policies seemed in
Moscow. As Talbott adviser Victoria Nuland put
it, "The more you tell them it's good for them,
the more they gag." By sending the message that
Russia should not have an independent foreign
policy -- or even an independent domestic one --
the Clinton administration generated much
resentment. This neocolonial approach went hand
in hand with IMF recommendations that most
economists now agree were ill suited to Russia
and so painful for the population that they could
never have been implemented democratically.
However, Yeltsin's radical reformers were only
too happy to impose them without popular consent.

At the time, former President Nixon, as well as a
number of prominent U.S. business leaders and
Russia specialists, recognized the folly of the
U.S. approach and urged compromise between
Yeltsin and the more conservative Duma. Nixon was
disturbed when Russian officials told him that
the United States had expressed its willingness
to condone the Yeltsin administration's decision
to take "resolute" steps against the Duma so long
as the Kremlin accelerated economic reforms.
Nixon warned that "encouraging departures from
democracy in a country with such an autocratic
tradition as Russia's is like trying to put out a
fire with combustible materials." Moreover, he
argued that acting on Washington's "fatally
flawed assumption" that Russia was not and would
not be a world power for some time would imperil
peace and endanger democracy in the region.

Although Clinton met with Nixon, he ignored this
advice and disregarded Yeltsin's worst excesses.
A stalemate between Yeltsin and the Duma and
Yeltsin's unconstitutional decree dissolving the
body soon followed, ultimately leading to
violence and tanks shelling the parliament
building. After the episode, Yeltsin forced
through a new constitution granting Russia's
president sweeping powers at the expense of the
parliament. This move consolidated the first
Russian president's hold on power and laid the
foundation for his drift toward authoritarianism.
The appointment of Vladimir Putin -- then the
head of Russia's post-KGB intelligence service,
the FSB -- as prime minister and then as acting
president was a natural outcome of Washington's
reckless encouragement of Yeltsin's authoritarian tendencies.

Other aspects of the Clinton administration's
foreign policy further heightened Russia's
resentment. NATO expansion -- especially the
first wave, which involved the Czech Republic,
Hungary, and Poland -- was not a big problem in
and of itself. Most Russians were prepared to
accept NATO enlargement as an unhappy but
unthreatening development -- until the 1999
Kosovo crisis. When NATO went to war against
Serbia, despite strong Russian objections and
without approval from the UN Security Council,
the Russian elite and the Russian people quickly
came to the conclusion that they had been
profoundly misled and that NATO remained directed
against them. Great powers -- particularly great
powers in decline -- do not appreciate such
demonstrations of their irrelevance.

Notwithstanding Russian anger over Kosovo, in
late 1999, Putin, then prime minister, made a
major overture to the United States just after
ordering troops into Chechnya. He was troubled by
Chechen connections with al Qaeda and the fact
that Taliban-run Afghanistan was the only country
to have established diplomatic relations with
Chechnya. Motivated by these security interests,
rather than any newfound love for the United
States, Putin suggested that Moscow and
Washington cooperate against al Qaeda and the
Taliban. This initiative came after the 1993
World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 bombing
of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, by which
time the Clinton administration had more than
enough information to understand the mortal
danger the United States faced from Islamic fundamentalists.

But Clinton and his advisers, frustrated with
Russian defiance in the Balkans and the removal
of reformers from key posts in Moscow, ignored
this overture. They increasingly saw Russia not
as a potential partner but as a nostalgic,
dysfunctional, financially weak power at whose
expense the United States should make whatever
gains it could. Thus they sought to cement the
results of the Soviet Union's disintegration by
bringing as many post-Soviet states as possible
under Washington's wing. They pressed Georgia to
participate in building the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
oil pipeline, running from the Caspian Sea to the
Mediterranean and bypassing Russia. They
encouraged Georgia's opportunistic president,
Eduard Shevardnadze, to seek NATO membership and
urged U.S. embassies in Central Asia to work
against Russian influence in the region. Finally,
they dismissed Putin's call for U.S.-Russian
counterterrorist collaboration as desperate
neoimperialism and an attempt to reestablish
Russia's waning influence in Central Asia. What
the Clinton administration did not appreciate,
however, was that it was also giving away a
historic opportunity to put al Qaeda and the
Taliban on the defensive, destroy their bases,
and potentially disrupt their ability to launch
major operations. Only after nearly 3,000 U.S.
citizens were killed on September 11, 2001, did this cooperation finally begin.

FROM SOUL MATES TO RIVALS

When George W. Bush came to power in January
2001, eight months after Putin became president
of Russia, his administration faced a new group
of relatively unknown Russian officials. Keen to
differentiate its policy from Clinton's, the Bush
team did not see Russia as a priority; many of
its members saw Moscow as corrupt and
undemocratic -- and weak. Although this
assessment was accurate, the Bush administration
lacked the strategic foresight to reach out to
Moscow. Bush and Putin did develop good personal
chemistry, however. When they first met, at a
June 2001 summit in Slovenia, Bush famously
vouched for Putin's soul and democratic convictions.

The events of September 11, 2001, dramatically
changed Washington's attitude toward Moscow and
prompted a strong outpouring of emotional support
for the United States in Russia. Putin reiterated
his long-standing offer of support against al
Qaeda and the Taliban; he granted overflight
rights across Russian territory, endorsed the
establishment of U.S. bases in Central Asia, and,
perhaps most important, facilitated access to a
readily available Russian-armed and
Russian-trained military force in Afghanistan:
the Northern Alliance. Of course, he had Russia's
own interests in mind; to Putin, it was a
blessing that the United States had joined the
fight against Islamist terrorism. Like many other
alliances, U.S.-Russian cooperation on
counterterrorism came into existence because of
shared fundamental interests, not a common ideology or mutual sympathy.

Despite this newfound cooperation, relations
remained strained in other areas. Bush's
announcement in December 2001 that the United
States would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, one of the last remaining symbols
of Russia's former superpower status, further
wounded the Kremlin's pride. Likewise, Russian
animosity toward NATO only grew after the
alliance incorporated the three Baltic states,
two of which -- Estonia and Latvia -- had
unresolved disputes with Russia relating
principally to the treatment of ethnic Russian minorities.

At roughly the same time, Ukraine became a source
of major tension. From Russia's perspective, U.S.
support for Viktor Yushchenko's Orange Revolution
was not just about promoting democracy; it was
also about undermining Russia's influence in a
neighboring state that had joined the Russian
empire voluntarily in the seventeenth century and
that had both significant cultural ties with
Russia and a large Russian population. Moreover,
in Moscow's view, contemporary Ukraine's border
-- drawn by Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev
as an administrative frontier between Soviet
provinces -- stretched far beyond historical
Ukraine's outer limits, incorporating millions of
Russians and creating ethnic, linguistic, and
political tensions. The Bush administration's
approach to Ukraine -- namely, its pressure on a
divided Ukraine to request NATO membership and
its financial support for nongovernmental
organizations actively assisting pro-Yushchenko
political parties -- has fueled Moscow's concerns
that the United States is pursuing a
neocontainment policy. Few Bush administration
officials or members of Congress considered the
implications of challenging Russia in an area so
central to its national interests and on an issue so emotionally charged.

Georgia soon became another battleground.
President Mikheil Saakashvili has been seeking to
use Western support, particularly from the United
States, as his principal tool in reestablishing
Georgian sovereignty over the breakaway regions
of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where
Russian-backed separatists have fought for
independence from Georgia since the early 1990s.
And Saakashvili has not just been demanding the
return of the two Georgian enclaves; he has been
openly positioning himself as the leading
regional advocate of "color revolutions" and the
overthrow of leaders sympathetic to Moscow. He
has portrayed himself as a champion of democracy
and an eager supporter of U.S. foreign policy,
going so far as to send Georgian troops to Iraq
in 2004 as part of the coalition force. The fact
that he was elected with 96 percent of the vote
-- a suspiciously high number -- along with his
control of parliament and Georgian television,
has provoked little concern outside the country.
Nor has the arbitrary prosecution of business
leaders and political rivals. When Zurab Zhvania
-- Georgia's popular prime minister and the only
remaining political counterweight to Saakashvili
-- died in 2005 under mysterious circumstances
involving an alleged gas leak, members of his
family publicly rejected the government's account
of the incident with a clear implication that
they believed Saakashvili's regime had been
involved. But in contrast to U.S. concern over
the murder of Russian opposition figures, no one
in Washington seemed to notice.

In fact, the Bush administration and influential
politicians in both parties have routinely
supported Saakashvili against Russia,
notwithstanding his transgressions. The United
States has urged him on several occasions to
control his temper and avoid provoking open
military confrontation with Russia, but it is
clear that Washington has adopted Georgia as its
main client in the region. The United States has
provided equipment and training to the Georgian
military, enabling Saakashvili to take a harder
line toward Russia; Georgian forces have gone so
far as to detain and publicly humiliate Russian
military personnel deployed as peacekeepers in
South Ossetia and Georgia proper.

Of course, Russia's conduct vis-à-vis Georgia has
been far from exemplary. Moscow has granted
Russian citizenship to most residents of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia and has imposed economic
sanctions against Georgia, often on dubious
grounds. And Russian peacekeepers in the area are
clearly there to limit Georgia's ability to rule
the two regions. But this blind U.S. support for
Saakashvili contributes to a sense in Moscow that
the United States is pursuing policies aimed at
undermining what remains of Russia's drastically
reduced regional influence. The sense in the
Kremlin is that the United States cares about
using democracy as an instrument to embarrass and
isolate Putin more than it cares about democracy itself.

DEALING WITH A RESURGENT RUSSIA

Despite these growing tensions, Russia has not
yet become a U.S. adversary. There is still a
chance to stop further deterioration of the
relationship. This will require a clearheaded
evaluation of U.S. objectives in the region and
an examination of the many areas where U.S. and
Russian interests converge -- especially
counterterrorism and nonproliferation. It will
also require careful management of situations
such as the nuclear standoff in Iran, where the
two countries' goals are similar but their
tactical preferences diverge. Most important, the
United States must recognize that it no longer
enjoys unlimited leverage over Russia. Today,
Washington simply cannot force its will on Moscow as it did in the 1990s.

The Bush administration and key congressional
voices have reasonably suggested that
counterterrorism and nonproliferation should be
the defining issues in the U.S.-Russian
relationship. Stability in Russia -- still home
to thousands of nuclear weapons -- and the
post-Soviet states is also a key priority.
Moscow's support for sanctions -- and, when
necessary, the use of force -- against rogue
states and terrorist groups would be extremely helpful to Washington.

The United States has an interest in spreading
democratic governance throughout the region, but
it would be far-fetched to expect the Putin
government to support U.S. democracy-promotion
efforts. Washington must continue to ensure than
no one, including Moscow, interferes with the
rights of others to choose a democratic form of
government or make independent foreign policy
decisions. But it must recognize that it has
limited leverage at its disposal to achieve this
goal. With high energy prices, sound fiscal
policies, and tamed oligarchs, the Putin regime
no longer needs international loans or economic
assistance and has no trouble attracting major
foreign investment despite growing tension with
Western governments. Within Russia, relative
stability, prosperity, and a new sense of dignity
have tempered popular disillusionment with
growing state control and the heavy-handed
manipulation of the political process.

The overwhelmingly negative public image of the
United States and its Western allies -- carefully
sustained by the Russian government -- sharply
limits the United States' ability to develop a
constituency inclined to accept its advice on
Russia's domestic affairs. In the current
climate, Washington cannot hope to do much more
than convey strongly to Russia that repression is
incompatible with long-term partnership with the
United States. To make matters worse, the power
of the United States' moral example has been
damaged. Moreover, suspicion of U.S. intentions
runs so deep that Moscow reflexively views even
decisions not directed against Russia, such as
the deployment of antimissile systems in the
Czech Republic and Poland, with extreme apprehension.

Meanwhile, as Moscow looks westward with
suspicion, Russia's use of its energy for
political purposes has angered Western
governments, not to mention its energy-dependent
neighbors. Russia clearly sets different energy
prices for its friends; government officials and
executives of the state-controlled oil company
Gazprom have occasionally displayed both bravado
and satisfaction in threatening to penalize those
who resist, such as Georgia and Ukraine. But on a
fundamental level, Russia is simply rewarding
those who enter into special political and
economic arrangements with it by offering them
below-market prices for Russian energy resources.
Russia grudgingly accepts the Atlanticist choices
of its neighbors but refuses to subsidize them.
Also, it is somewhat disingenuous for the United
States to respond to Russia's political use of
energy with self-righteous indignation
considering that no country introduces economic
sanctions more frequently or enthusiastically than the United States.

U.S. commentators often accuse Russia of
intransigence on Kosovo, but Moscow's public
position is that it will accept any agreement
negotiated by Serbia and Kosovo. There is no
evidence that Russia has discouraged Serbia from
reaching a deal with Kosovo; on the contrary,
there have even been some hints that Moscow may
abstain from voting on a UN Security Council
resolution recognizing Kosovo's independence in
the absence of a settlement with Belgrade. If
unrecognized territories from the former Soviet
Union, especially Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
could likewise become independent without the
consent of the states from which they seek to
break away, Moscow would benefit. Many in Russia
would not mind Kosovo's becoming a precedent for
unrecognized post-Soviet territories, most of
which are eager for independence leading to integration with Russia.

A variety of other foreign policy disagreements
have exacerbated tensions further. It is true
that Russia did not support the United States'
decision to invade Iraq, but nor did key NATO
allies such as France and Germany. Russia has
supplied conventional weapons to some nations the
United States considers hostile, such as Iran,
Syria, and Venezuela, but it does so on a
commercial basis and within the limits of
international law. The United States may
understandably view this as provocative, but many
Russians would express similar feelings about
U.S. arms transfers to Georgia. And although
Russia has not gone as far as the United States
and Europe would like when it comes to
disciplining Iran and North Korea, Moscow has
gradually come to support sanctions against both countries.

These numerous disagreements do not mean that
Russia is an enemy. After all, Russia has not
supported al Qaeda or any other terrorist group
at war with the United States and no longer
promotes a rival ideology with the goal of world
domination. Nor has it invaded or threatened to
invade its neighbors. Finally, Russia has opted
not to foment separatism in Ukraine, despite the
existence there of a large and vocal Russian
minority population. Putin and his advisers
accept that the United States is the most
powerful nation in the world and that provoking
it needlessly makes little sense. But they are no
longer willing to adjust their behavior to fit
U.S. preferences, particularly at the expense of their own interests.

A BLUEPRINT FOR COOPERATION

Working constructively with Russia does not mean
nominating Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize or
inviting him to address a joint session of
Congress. Nor is anyone encouraging Russia to
join NATO or welcoming it as a great democratic
friend. What Washington must do is work with
Russia to advance essential U.S. interests in the
same way that the United States works with other
important nondemocratic states, such as China,
Kazakhstan, and Saudi Arabia. This means avoiding
both misplaced affection and the unrealistic
sense that the United States can take other
countries for granted without consequences. Few
deny that such cooperation should be pursued, but
Washington's naive and self-serving conventional
wisdom holds that the United States can secure
Russia's cooperation in areas important to the
United States while maintaining complete freedom
to ignore Russian priorities. U.S. officials
believe that Moscow should uncritically support
Washington against Iran and Islamist terrorists
on the theory that Russia also considers them
threats. However, this argument ignores the fact
that Russia views the Iranian threat very
differently. Although Russia does not want a
nuclear-armed Iran, it does not feel the same
sense of urgency over the issue and may be
satisfied with intrusive inspections preventing
industrial-scale uranium enrichment. Expecting
Russia to accommodate the United States on Iran
without regard to U.S. policy on other issues is
the functional equivalent of expecting Iraqis to
welcome the U.S. and coalition troops as
liberators in that it fundamentally ignores the
other side's perspective on U.S. actions.

With this in mind, the United States should be
firm in its relations with Russia and should make
clear that Iran, nonproliferation, and terrorism
are defining issues in the bilateral
relationship. Similarly, Washington should
communicate to Moscow that aggression against a
NATO member or the unprovoked use of force
against any other state would do profound damage
to the relationship. The United States should
also demonstrate with words and deeds that it
will oppose any effort to re-create the Soviet
Union. In economic affairs, Washington should
signal very clearly that manipulation of the law
to seize assets that were legally acquired by
foreign energy companies will have serious
consequences, including restrictions on Russian
access to U.S. and Western downstream markets and
damage to Russia's reputation that would limit
not only investment and transfers of technology
but also Western companies' support for
engagement with Russia. Finally, the United
States should not be deterred by Russian
objections to placing missile defense systems in
the Czech Republic and Poland. Rather, in Henry
Kissinger's formulation, Washington should keep
the deployments limited to their "stated
objective of overcoming rogue state threats" and
combine them with an agreement on specific steps
designed to reassure Moscow that the program has
nothing to do with a hypothetical war against Russia.

The good news is that although Russia is
disillusioned with the United States and Europe,
it is so far not eager to enter into an alliance
against the West. The Russian people do not want
to risk their new prosperity -- and Russia's
elites are loath to give up their Swiss bank
accounts, London mansions, and Mediterranean
vacations. Although Russia is seeking greater
military cooperation with China, Beijing does not
seem eager to start a fight with Washington
either. At the moment, the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization -- which promotes cooperation among
China, Russia, and the Central Asian states -- is
a debating club rather than a genuine security alliance.

But if the current U.S.-Russian relationship
deteriorates further, it will not bode well for
the United States and would be even worse for
Russia. The Russian general staff is lobbying to
add a military dimension to the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization, and some top officials
are beginning to champion the idea of a foreign
policy realignment directed against the West.
There are also quite a few countries, such as
Iran and Venezuela, urging Russia to work with
China to play a leading role in balancing the
United States economically, politically, and
militarily. And post-Soviet states such as
Georgia, which are adept at playing the United
States and Russia off against each other, could
act in ways that escalate tensions. Putin's stage
management of Moscow's succession in order to
maintain a dominant role for himself makes a
major foreign policy shift in Russia unlikely.
But new Russian leaders could have their own
ideas -- and their own ambitions -- and political
uncertainty or economic problems could tempt them
to exploit nationalist sentiments to build legitimacy.

If relations worsen, the UN Security Council may
no longer be available -- due to a Russian veto
-- even occasionally, to provide legitimacy for
U.S. military actions or to impose meaningful
sanctions on rogue states. Enemies of the United
States could be emboldened by new sources of
military hardware in Russia, and political and
security protection from Moscow. International
terrorists could find new sanctuaries in Russia
or the states it protects. And the collapse of
U.S.-Russian relations could give China much
greater flexibility in dealing with the United
States. It would not be a new Cold War, because
Russia will not be a global rival and is unlikely
to be the prime mover in confronting the United
States. But it would provide incentives and cover
for others to confront Washington, with potentially catastrophic results.

It would be reckless and shortsighted to push
Russia in that direction by repeating the errors
of the past, rather than working to avoid the
dangerous consequences of a renewed U.S.-Russian
confrontation. But ultimately, Moscow will have
to make its own decisions. Given the Kremlin's
history of poor policy choices, a clash may come
whether Washington likes it or not. And should
that happen, the United States must approach this
rivalry with greater realism and determination
than it has displayed in its halfhearted attempts at partnership.